John 1 - The New International Commentary
1–2 Each of the four Gospels begins, appropriately enough, with a reference to some kind of beginning. Mark’s heading is “Beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Mk 1:1). Matthew opens with an account of the origin of Jesus Christ” (Mt 1:1). Luke acknowledges the traditions of “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (Lk 1:2). John’s “beginning” (
In any event, the words “In the beginning”* unmistakably echo Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” Yet the differences are more striking than the similarities. God is the solitary Creator in the Genesis account, while in John creation is jointly the work of God and the Word. Genesis, moreover, is interested in God’s act, not God’s being or existence, which is simply presupposed: “God made the heaven and the earth.” John’s Gospel, by contrast, focuses on being, in three clauses: (1) “In the beginning was the Word,” (2) “the Word was with God,” and (3) “the Word was God.”* Perhaps this is because God in the book of Genesis needs no introduction. God can be safely presupposed, but the same is not true of the Word in the Gospel of John. The Word must be identified, and can only be identified in relation to God, the God of Israel.
After introducing “the Word” in the first clause, the verse presents an interplay between “the Word” (
What then is the relationship between the Word and God? The signals are mixed, in that the two are viewed first as distinct entities (“the Word was with God”), and then in some way identified with each other (“the Word was God”). “God” in the first instance has the definite article in Greek (
God will emerge in this Gospel as “the Father,” with the Word as the Father’s “only Son” (see vv. 14, 18) or simply “the Son.” To express this relationship, later Christian theology introduced the Hellenistic notions of “nature” and of “person”: the Father and the Son are two distinct Persons sharing a common nature as God. A classic “Johannine” opening to the Gospel, and one wholly congenial to later Christian theology, would have been, “In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with the Father, and the Son was God. He was in the beginning with the Father.” Instead, the Gospel writer has opted to postpone speaking of “the Son” and “the Father” until after the narrative proper has begun, with the appearance of the “man sent from God. John was his name” (1:6). This is appropriate because elsewhere in the Gospel tradition the Father is defined as Father and the Son as Son precisely in the setting of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River (Mk 1:9–11 and parallels). The choice of different vocabulary in the preamble has contributed to the widespread (but questionable) view among modern scholars that not only the first five verses but much of what is commonly known as the prologue (vv. 1–18) belongs to a pre-Johannine, possibly pre-Christian, hymn.
The first and second clauses of verse 1 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”) are echoed more briefly, like an antiphonal response, in verse 2: “He was in the beginning with God.”* The point is that the Word was God’s companion in the work of creation (see v. 3). The writer will not let us bypass the “beginning” and Genesis 1:1 too quickly. Ptolemy, the earliest known commentator on the Gospel of John, in the mid-second century elevated
In this way Ptolemy, a Valentinian Gnostic, created a kind of “trinity” out of the opening verses of John long before trinitarianism became dominant in the church. Nor is his interpretation quite as far-fetched as it sounds, given that
I. Preamble: The Light (1:1–5)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing that has come into being was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of humans, and the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
The story to be told in this Gospel begins with the words, “A man came, sent from God. John was his name” (1:6). This means that the five preceding verses must be taken as a kind of preface or preamble, in keeping with the principle stated by John himself that “The One coming after me … was before me” (v. 15; see also v. 30). This will be new to generations of readers who are accustomed to setting the first eighteen verses of the Gospel apart as “The Prologue.” In identifying the first five verses of John as “preamble,” rather than the first eighteen as “prologue,” we are breaking with tradition, and within these five verses we break with tradition again by accenting “the light”* rather than “the Word” as their major theme. John’s Gospel is classically remembered as a Gospel of the Word (
3–4 As soon as the Word has been introduced, “was” gives way to “came” or “came to be” (
The classic problem of the verse is that the symmetry is broken by the seemingly redundant clause, “that which has come to be” (
Is Aland’s reading correct? I once thought so,* but now I am not so sure. This was a rare point at which Bruce Metzger disagreed with the committee that edited the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament. The UBS Editorial Committee read
Peter Cohee, in an attempt to resolve the problem, argues that the seemingly redundant clause was not original, but rather “introduced into the text as a gloss.”* But even if it is a gloss, the same question remains. Was it added to the end of verse 3, or to the beginning of verse 4? Whether one agrees with his conclusion or not, Cohee’s answer is instructive. If it is a gloss to verse 3, he infers that “Someone wished to point out that the absolute statement in the verse proper applied to the mortal sphere of created things, but that there were things—or at least one thing—uncreated.”* In effect, Cohee is attributing the gloss to a scribe whose interpretation of John 1:3–4 precisely matched that of Ptolemy. Irenaeus quotes Ptolemy as claiming that “ ‘all things’ came into existence ‘through’ it [
If it is not a gloss, but part of the original text, then Cohee’s mention of a view “that there were things—or at least one thing—uncreated” takes on added significance, for it could as easily be the view of the Gospel writer himself as of a later scribe. As soon as he had written, “All things came into being through him,” and “not one thing was made without him,” it may have occurred to the writer that some things did not come into being at all, but had always existed.* Among these were the two things of immediate concern in these opening verses, eternal “life” and the “light” of human beings. Other examples would have been divine wisdom, truth, and love. Such things are not creations of God but attributes of God. They exist wherever and whenever God exists. The Gospel writer, therefore, had to add the words “that which has come into being” as a qualification: “All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing that has come into being was made” (my italics).* Not all things were created, but all things created were created through the Word. The contrast is not, as Ptolemy thought, between things created through the Word and things created in the Word, but between things that came into being through the Word and things that did not come into being at all, but always were. The latter, being attributes of God, are also attributes of the Word.
The first of these is “life,” probably not physical life (which according to Genesis 1 was created), but spiritual life, or what the Gospel of John elsewhere calls “eternal life.” One definition of “eternal,” after all, is having neither end nor beginning. Here the Gospel writer moves past “life” quickly to get to the theme of light, which will be developed at greater length in the verses to follow, but in 1 John “life” takes center stage at the start. There, having mentioned “the word [or message] of Life” (1 Jn 1:1), the writer adds, “and the Life was revealed, and we have seen, and we testify and announce to you that eternal Life which was with the Father [
Almost always, “light” in the Gospel of John is a metaphor,* but the question here is whether the metaphor is to be understood universally, as the intellectual or emotional light distinguishing humans from the rest of creation, or more specifically as the “the light of the world” revealed in Jesus Christ (see 8:12). This question can perhaps be answered definitively only after taking into consideration verse 9 of this chapter (“The light was the True [Light] that illumines every human being who comes into the world”), and 3:19 (“This then is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and human beings loved the dark rather than the Light, for their works were evil”). The former points toward the general or universal understanding of verse 4, the latter toward the more redemptive-historical interpretation. But because there has been no mention of any specific “coming” of the light this early in the story, it is wise to give the phrase “the light of humans” the broadest possible application. It is fair to assume that “the light of humans” refers to a capacity for love and understanding given to every human being at birth. Despite the strong Johannine emphasis on another birth, “of God” (1:13) or “of the Spirit” (3:6) or “from above” (3:3), the testimony of verse 4 is that physical birth is also a source of “light” from God. At least the burden of proof is on those who would argue otherwise.
5 The tense of the verb changes from imperfect to present. The light “is shining” (
This is the first we have heard of “darkness” (
6 The coming of “John” into the world represents a continuation of the plan of God that began with creation. Just as all things “came into being” through the Word (v. 3), so John “came” as one “sent from God.”* The terminology invites misunderstanding, perhaps deliberately on the author’s part. If John was “sent from God,” was he a divine messenger or angel of some kind? The use of the term “man” or “human being” (
A. John and the Coming of the Light (1:6–13)
A man came, sent from God. John was his name. He came for a testimony, to testify about the light, that they all might believe through him. He was not the light, but [he came] to testify about the light. The light was the true [Light] that illumines every human being who comes into the world.* He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own did not receive him. But to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood lines, nor of fleshly desire, nor a husband’s desire, but of God.
The narrative, like that of Mark’s Gospel (1:4), begins with John the Baptist, or Baptizer, known here simply as “John” (v. 6).* As we have seen, the name “John,”* right on the heels of the caption “According to John” in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel,* could mislead some readers into thinking that this John is either the author of the Gospel or its main character, and indeed a case could be made that his is the major voice in at least the Gospel’s first three chapters. John’s ministry of baptism is not even mentioned at first (not until v. 25), but instead he is identified (v. 7) as one who “came for a testimony, to testify about the light” (that is, the “light” mentioned in vv. 4 and 5), so that “they all might believe through him” (v. 7). But almost immediately, as if to deflect the assumption that the story is going to be about him, the narrative is interrupted, as the narrator stops to explain that John himself was not the light (v. 8), then to reflect on the identity of the light (v. 9) and on the coming of the light into the world as a person (“he” and not “it”). The Christian reader will know that the Light is Jesus, but strictly speaking “he” is still anonymous. All we know for certain is that he is not John. We do learn that the world he created “did not know him,” and “his own did not receive him,” yet that some did receive him, and that those who did are called “the children of God.” As for John, and his explicit testimony to “the light,” that will come later (see vv. 15–16, 19–34; 3:27–36). In short, the preamble (vv. 1–5) intrudes upon the narrative, as the Gospel writer pauses to spell out its implications, and in the process summarizes in very few words the whole of the Gospel story (see vv. 10–13).
II. The Testimony of John (1:6–3:36)
After the preamble, the first three chapters of the Gospel are framed by John’s varied testimonies to Jesus (1:6–8, 15–16, 19–36 and 3:22–36), and his continuing presence gives these chapters their distinctive character. John’s is the dominant voice at first, and then as Jesus begins to find his own voice (3:11–21), John bids the reader good-bye (3:30), confirming Jesus’ testimony and yielding center stage to “the One coming from above” (3:31–36).
7–8 Preamble and narrative beginning are linked both in style and content. Stylistically, verses 7–8 exhibit the same chainlike repetition or “staircase parallelism” evident in verses 1–5: the pattern of “testimony, testify, light, light, testify, light,” recalls the repetition of “Word, Word, God, God, Word” in verse 1, or of “life, life, light, light, darkness, darkness” in verses 4–5. The similarity is remarkable in view of the fact that advocates of a hymnic source behind the so-called prologue have tended to identify verses 1–5 largely as poetry and verses 6–8 as a prose interpolation. As to content, the new factor introduced is “testimony” (or
C. H. Dodd found in verses 7–8 an anticipation of much of what is to follow concerning John. The statement that John “came for a testimony, to testify about the light” (v. 7a) anticipates John’s recorded testimonies in 1:19–34, while the intent “that they all might believe through him” (v. 7b) comes to realization in 1:35–37. Within John’s testimonies, the notion that John himself “was not the light” (v. 8a) provides the theme of 1:19–28, where the accent is mainly on what he himself is not (that is, not the Christ, not Elijah, not the Prophet, vv. 20–21); the positive aspect of “testifying about the light” (v. 8b) comes to expression in 1:29–34, where John finally sees Jesus and points him out as “Lamb of God” (v. 29) and “Son of God” (v. 34).* Whether Dodd has given us here a glimpse into the author’s actual programmatic intent or simply a useful pedagogical device is uncertain. But his insight underscores the centrality of “testimony,” or
The goal of John’s testimony is “that they all might believe through him”—not “in him” but “through him.” This is the first appearance of the verb “believe” (
The disclaimer to the effect that John “was not the light” (v. 8) is important for two reasons. First, it raises the obvious question of why such a disclaimer was necessary. Does the author know of readers or potential readers for whom John and not Jesus was the main character in the story? We know that there were such groups in later times,* and this is the first of several hints in the Gospel that the author may be countering their views by attempting to “put John in his place,”* exalting Jesus, and him alone, as the Word (vv. 1–2, 14), the true Light (vv. 4–5, 9), and God’s One and Only (vv. 14, 18).
Second, the disclaimer has the effect of sidetracking the narrative, just as it is getting started, by shifting the focus of interest away from John and his testimony and back to “the light” to which John testified—back, that is, to the preamble and to the overriding question of how it came about that “the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it” (v. 5). The narrative that began at verse 6 is aborted in favor of a series of theological reflections, not on John’s significance but on the significance of the light. With these reflections the whole story is collapsed into a magnificent summary of the Gospel (vv. 6–13), with a response from the believing community (vv. 14–18). The narrative proper, at its orderly and proper pace, will resume in earnest only at verse 19, with a detailed account of John’s testimony to a delegation of priests and Levites from Jerusalem.
9 More about the light. In my translation I have taken “light” as the subject and the adjective “true” substantivally as a predicate: “The light was the true [Light].” It is also possible to take both as predicates (“That—or he—was the true Light”), leaving the subject unexpressed and without a definite antecedent. This is commonly done on the assumption that the unexpressed subject is “the Word,”* but the Word has not been mentioned, even implicitly, since verse 4.* Even if the subject is left unexpressed (as “that,” or “he”), it is defined not by an antecedent but by its predicate, as “the light” to which John testified in verse 8. The point of verse 9 is that the light in question here, “the light of humans” mentioned earlier, was the “true” light (see 1 Jn 2:8), not so much in contrast to some “false” or misleading light as in contrast to all other light—the physical “light of this world,” for example (11:9), or the spiritual “light” given off by the ministry of John, the “burning and shining lamp” (5:35). The light to which John testified was not his own, but the supreme and universal “Light of the world” (8:12), the light “that illumines every human being who comes into the world.” For the first time, “light” can be appropriately capitalized, because it is now apparent that “the true Light” is a personal being.
In our translation, the participle “coming” or “who comes” (
Modern translators are bothered not only by the apparent redundancy, but perhaps also by the fact that on this interpretation no room is left for any explicit mention of the coming of the light into the world. The alternative adopted by most commentators and modern English versions has been to read the participial expression with “light” rather than with “every human being,” as, for example, in the REB: “The true light which gives light to everyone was even then coming into the world” (see RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB, NEB). But there are difficulties with such a translation. The verb “was,” instead of standing on its own like the seven other instances of this verb in the first thirteen verses, is pressed into service as a helping verb with the participle “coming” so as to create a periphrastic construction (“was … coming”) rather uncharacteristic of Johannine style.* Moreover, the periphrastic construction gives the impression that the coming of the light into the world was a state, or at most a process, rather than a simple identifiable event.* The words “even then,” which are not in the Greek text but supplied in the REB translation, represent an effort to give this process a setting in real history, within the ministry of John as sketched in verses 6–8. But if we think of the light as Jesus, then the coming of the light is not a process going on during John’s ministry, but a simple event, the birth of Jesus. In replying to Pontius Pilate, Jesus himself says as much: “You say that I am a king; I was born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might testify to the truth” (18:37, my italics). It should come as no surprise that being “born” and “coming into the world” are equivalent expressions. If “the light” is a human being, then the light “comes into the world” like any other human, by natural birth, not by some kind of continuing process, least of all during the ministry of John!
Another alternative views the phrase “coming into the world” either as a kind of afterthought,* or as a parenthetical expression modifying “the light.” In effect, a comma is placed (as in the Nestle Greek text) between “every human being” and “coming into the world.” This too could be read as a process, like the periphrastic construction mentioned above,* or it could be read simply as a characterization of the light, as, for example, in the NASB (“There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man”), or the TEV (“This was the real light—the light that comes into the world and shines on all mankind”). It is a “coming-into-the-world” sort of light, just as “the bread of God,” or “bread of life” (another designation for Jesus), is a “coming-down-from-heaven” sort of bread (6:33, 50). Just as Jesus, coming down from heaven, “gives life to the world” (6:33), so this light, coming into the world, “illumines every human being.”*
This view avoids the difficulties of the first alternative, and must be held open as a possibility. Still, the traditional interpretation that “coming into the world” goes with “every human being” remains the most natural one. On such a reading, the “light” is not explicitly said to “come into the world” at all. What we might have expected, and what is missing, is a simple affirmation that the light “came” (
10 Those who read “coming into the world” with “the light” commonly point to verse 10 in support of their interpretation: the light “was coming into the world” (v. 9), and consequently “was in the world” (v. 10).* But the statements are too close together for the link to be convincing. There is a certain awkwardness in claiming that the light “was coming into the world” (v. 9), and then, almost in the same breath, that it “was in the world” (v. 10). No sooner is the process mentioned than it is over. The reader is tempted to ask, “Which is it? Was the light on its way, or had it actually arrived?”
Verse 10 settles the matter. The light “was in the world,” and it is probably fair to assume that the time frame is the same as in verses 6–9: that is, during the ministry of John, and on the threshold of Jesus’ ministry. The author’s fondness for word repetitions surfaces again in verse 10, as the expression “the world” is picked up from the end of verse 9 and repeated three times, in three distinct clauses. As in verse 9, the subject is “the light,” but with an increasingly human persona. In the first clause, the notion that the light “was in the world” comes as no surprise in view of such phrases as “the light of humans” (v. 4), or “the light … that illumines every human being.” But was “the light” an “it” or a “he”? In itself, the second clause could be translated either “the world came into being through it,” or “the world came into being through him.” But the analogy with “all things came into being through him” (that is, through the Word, v. 3) argues for the latter. The “light” of verses 4–5 and 7–9 is here assimilated to “the Word” mentioned in verses 1–2. Finally, in the third and last clause of verse 10, “the world did not know him,” the masculine pronoun “him” (
In verse 10 the Gospel writer wants to remind us of creation, and that the entire created order came into being through “the Word,” now further identified as “the Light” (and appropriately capitalized in translation). The effect is to heighten the irony and tragedy of a new assertion: “and [yet] the world did not know him.” Even though he created the world, still “the world did not know him”!* It is natural to ask if perhaps the reason—or at least one reason—for beginning with creation in the first place was to lay the basis for this supreme irony in the story of Jesus. The statement that “the world did not know him” is the second hint of conflict or rejection in the Gospel story, the first being the note in verse 5 that the darkness “did not overtake” the light. Its purpose, however, is not—at least not yet—to set up a dualism between “the world” and some community of faith that does “know” Jesus as the world’s Light. John himself, within this chapter, will introduce his questioners to Jesus for the first time as someone “whom you do not know” (1:26), admitting that “even I did not know him” (1:31, 33). As the story unfolds, some will come to “know” Jesus and some will not, but for the time being “the world” is an undifferentiated whole, encompassing within itself the potential both for knowledge and ignorance, belief and unbelief.
11 The word repetitions continue: “his own,” “his own,” “received,” “received.”* The irony of the Light’s rejection comes to expression a second time, and even more explicitly: “He came to what was his own [
The notion that the Light, or the Word, found no reception in the world stands in sharp contrast to certain Jewish teachings about Wisdom seeking a home and finding it in Israel or Jerusalem.* It is more akin to the apocalyptic tradition in the book of Enoch about Wisdom finding no permanent home on earth.* But the story is not the same. “The Word,” or “the Light,” in John’s Gospel is not the “Wisdom” of either the wisdom or apocalyptic traditions in Judaism. The decisive difference is that “he”—not “she” as in the case of Wisdom—is a specific historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. Grammatically, the subject of verses 10 and 11 is the Light (see v. 9), but the author knows, and readers are expected to know, that the real subject is Jesus—even though he will not be named until verse 17, nor brought into the narrative until verse 29. Because verse 11 (even more than v. 10) has the sound of a concrete reference to Jesus and his ministry on earth, even those who appreciate the universality of the context tend to notice at the same time the appropriateness of verse 11 in relation to Israel and the Jewish people. Barrett is ambivalent on the subject,* while Hoskyns finds here a “double reference to the whole earth and to Israel as God’s possession,” with “no final distinction between Israel and the world, between Jew and Greek. As the creation of God, all men are his property … and Jesus was in the world, not merely in Israel.”* The point is that while the Jews are not viewed here as Jesus’ “own” in a special sense in which the Gentiles are not, they may be in mind as representatives of the world to which Jesus came, with Judea or Jerusalem as the stage on which the drama of Jesus’ confrontation with the world is to take place.
12 If “his own” in verse 11 is meant to be inclusive rather than exclusive, then “as many as received him” (v. 12) are not a different group consisting of others who were not Jesus’ own (Gentiles, for example, in contrast to Jews), but rather a subset of “his own.” This sets up a kind of rhetorical contrast, even contradiction. Jesus’ “own did not receive him,” yet many of them did receive him. The contradiction cannot be avoided by attributing different meanings to the two different words for “receive.” Rather, “receive” in verse 11 (
Grammatically, the author places a middle term between “receiving” and “believing.” “Receiving” implies a gift and a giver. “Giving” and “receiving” are natural correlatives in any language, not least in biblical Greek (see, for example, 3:27; 16:23–24; 17:8). Despite the word order, the subject of verse 12 is not the “many” who “received” the Light, but rather (as in vv. 10–11), an unexpressed subject, the Light himself (v. 9). The main verb, accordingly, is not “received,” but “gave,” with “them” as indirect object. The author, however, has highlighted the recipients instead of the giver by placing them front and center in a relative clause.* This is not all. The recipients are given “authority to become children of God” (
The point of verse 12 is that to receive “him” (that is, the Light, or Jesus as the Light) is to receive “authority” (
“Children of God” is not a distinctively Johannine phrase, nor is it common in the New Testament as a whole. It appears in the Gospel only here and in 11:52, and in 1 John 3:1, 2, 10 and 5:2.* Paul uses it four times (Rom 8:16, 21; 9:8; and Phil 2:15),* more or less interchangeably with “sons of God” (see Rom 8:14–15, 19, 23; 9:4). Bauer’s lexicon understands it “in Paul as those adopted by God,” and “in John as those begotten by God,”* but the distinction is not clear-cut. “Giving authority to become,” or granting status as children of God, is not so different from “adoption” in the Pauline sense (Rom 8:15, 23; 9:4; Gal 4:5). Yet John’s Gospel parts company with Paul in two ways. First, the term “sons of God” never occurs,* probably because the Gospel writer wants to preserve the uniqueness of Jesus’ relationship to God as “the Son.” Jesus is introduced, in fact, not simply as “Son” (
Before defining “children of God” (v. 13), the author pauses to identify God’s “children” unmistakably as “those who believe in his name” (v. 12b), a phrase equivalent to “those who believe in him”—that is, in the Light.* The longer expression, “to believe in the name,” occurs only here and in 2:23 and 3:18, while the simpler “to believe in” (
13 In simplest terms, “children of God,” or “those who believe in the name,” are those “born [or begotten] of God” (
The author accents the distinction between physical and spiritual birth by means of three negative phrases. “Not of blood lines” is literally “not of bloods.” The plural is unexpected because it refers in the Old Testament not to physical birth but to acts of bloodshed.* According to Schnackenburg, “It is found only in classical Greek for birth,” but even here the evidence is meager.* It is remotely possible that the writer avoids the singular, “of blood,” simply because Christian believers are in fact born anew through the blood of Christ, but this would have been a reason for avoiding the terminology of blood altogether, not for resorting to an ambiguous plural.* More likely, the plural points simply to the participation of two parents in the act of procreation, not to the physiological details of either conception or birth. In the second phrase, the words “of fleshly desire” (literally, “of the will of flesh”) are not equivalent to the “lust” (
Some ancient versions and patristic citations presuppose a singular relative pronoun and a singular verb (“who … was born”) instead of the plural, “were born.” The subject then becomes not the recipients of the Light, but the Light himself, the “him” of verse 12 in whose name they believed. In short, verse 13 becomes an explicit statement of the virginal conception and birth of Jesus. It is important to note that this reading is found in no Greek manuscript, and that it has no serious claim to originality.* Theologically, however, it was a natural, perhaps inevitable, development because verse 13 would have seemed to later scribes and Christian readers a perfect affirmation of the mystery of the virgin birth as narrated in Matthew and Luke. To some it would have set the stage admirably for the affirmation of verse 14 that “the Word came in human flesh.”* Another proposal has been that the plural was original, but that the author phrased verse 13 in such a way as to make a subtle allusion to the virgin birth of Jesus.* “Taken literally,” according to Haenchen, “these words express the virgin birth for all Christians.”* But the virgin birth of Jesus, according to Matthew and Luke, was a real physical birth from a real womb, and this is not the case with Christian believers. There is no actual virgin from whose womb they are born. The whole point of verse 13, as we have seen, is that the imagery of birth is not to be taken literally in their case. Its language, as Schnackenburg puts it, “seems to exclude not merely a human father, but any kind of human cooperation.”*
Efforts to read the virgin birth into verse 13 lose sight of an important feature of the last three verses of this section. After the profound christological reflection on “the Word” (vv. 1–3), and on “the true [Light] that illumines every human being who comes into the world” (v. 9), the writer shifts the center of interest to the recipients of the Light, known as “those who believe in his name,” or “children of God” (vv. 12–13).* The Word, or the Light (we are not even sure what to call him at this point) recedes momentarily into the background, as a pronoun (“him” or “his”), or as the unexpressed subject who “came to … his own” (v. 11) and “gave authority to become children of God” (v. 12). Christology gives way to ecclesiology, and the Christian community to which the Gospel of John was written takes center stage.
14 Depending on context, the conjunction (
“Came” here (
Ernst Käsemann’s rhetorical question is a good one: “Does the statement ‘The Word became flesh’ really mean more than that he descended into the world of man and there came into contact with earthly existence, so that an encounter with him became possible?” In itself, it does not. If one must choose between Käsemann and Haenchen (see n.
There is a parallelism of sorts between “came in human flesh” and “encamped among us” (italics added). Those who speak here as “we” or “us” are unmistakably “flesh,” a purely human community, even though “born of God” and not “of fleshly desire” (v. 13). The imagery of the phrase “encamped [
Beyond this, the tent imagery evokes the Exodus, and the tenting of God with the people of Israel in their desert wanderings. This is evident in the close association of the phrase “encamped among us” with the “glory” (
Similar covenant language is echoed in the prophets and in the New Testament. For example:
“My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Ezek 37:27, NIV).
“ ‘Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,’ declares the
“I will dwell and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people” (2 Cor 6:16).
“See, the tent of God is with humans, and he will encamp with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev 21:3).
In our text there is no direct reference to the Exodus nor to God’s ancient covenant with Israel. When the author wants us to think of Moses or the desert wanderings explicitly, he will mention Moses by name (v. 17). Yet if those speaking are “children of God” (vv. 12–13), covenant language is appropriate, for in almost the same breath in which the God who encamps on earth says, “I will be their God, and they will be my people,” he can also say, “I will be to you a father, and you will be to me sons and daughters” (2 Cor 6:18), or “Whoever overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be to him God and he will be to me a son” (Rev 21:7).
The “glory” (
In this Gospel (unlike the synoptics), the notion of Jesus as God’s “One and Only,” or more commonly as “the Son,” arises out of a certain perception of his ministry as a whole, not out of a specific incident such as the baptism or the transfiguration. The Gospel of John, in fact, makes no direct mention of either of these events. Similarly, “we looked at his glory” is not a claim based on a single experience (contrast Lk 9:32; 2 Pet 1:17–18), but a testimony to Jesus’ entire life on earth. His “glory” (
“Full of grace and truth”* probably modifies “a father’s One and Only.” Some English translations depart from the Greek word order so as to make it modify “the Word,”* but by the time “grace and truth” are mentioned the author has exchanged the terminology of “the Word” for that of Son and father.* The difference is small because in either case the phrase refers to “Jesus Christ” (compare v. 17). Other versions set off the expression translated here as “glory as of a father’s One and Only” with commas, in apposition to “his glory,” implying that “filled with grace and truth” modifies “glory.”* This is less satisfactory because attributes such as “grace and truth” are more appropriately applied to persons than to another attribute such as “glory.” It is, after all, Jesus the man who is “full of the Holy Spirit” according to Luke 4:1, and Stephen, a man, who is “full of grace and power” according to Acts 6:8.* If the Holy Spirit confers “power” (
Another line of interpretation derives “grace and truth” from the Exodus tradition, and two closely associated Hebrew words for “mercy” (or “covenant loyalty”) and “truth” (
B. Our Testimony and John’s (1:14–18)
So the Word came in human flesh and encamped among us; we looked at his glory—glory as of a father’s One and Only,* full of grace and truth. John testifies about him and has cried out, saying*—he it was who said, “The One coming after me has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me”—that of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God, ever. It was God the One and Only, the One who is right beside the Father, who told about him.
Stylistically, the next few verses stand apart from what precedes by their conspicuous use of the first-person plural: “So the Word … encamped among us, and we looked at his glory” (v. 14) and “Of his fullness we have all received” (v. 16, my italics). The change can be expressed in one of two ways. Either the author is revealing his own identity as one of the “children of God” introduced in verses 12 and 13 who “received” the Light, or else he is invoking this group implicitly in verse 14 to testify to their faith in much the same way in which he invokes John explicitly in verse 15 (“John testifies about him and has cried out, saying …”), In the first instance the author is speaking personally, in the second rhetorically.
If personally, a further question arises: Is the “we” exclusive or inclusive? Is the author distinguishing himself from his readers, as if to say, “The Word came in human flesh and encamped among us [the original disciples of Jesus], and we [the eyewitnesses of what is written in this Gospel] looked at his glory”? The analogy of 1 John 1:1–4 makes it tempting to introduce just such an “apostolic we” into the discussion,* but there is no “you” corresponding to the “we” to support such a distinction here.* On the contrary, two verses later we read, “Of his fullness we have all received” (v. 16), matching the inclusiveness of “as many as did receive him,” who “believe in his name” (v. 12). Despite the analogy of 1 John 1:1–4, it is by no means certain that the author writes self-consciously as an eyewitness here. Such an expression as “we looked at his glory” can be taken literally, as in Luke 9:32, where at Jesus’ transfiguration the disciples “stayed awake and saw his glory,” but it can just as easily be figurative, as in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where Paul concludes that “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (NRSV). In either case, the readers (and if he is not an eyewitness, the author himself) are drawn into the once-for-all experience of Jesus’ original disciples, just as they are in Jesus’ final benediction to Thomas, “Because you have seen me you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” (20:29). The fact that the author never returns to the first-person plural again until the very end of the Gospel (“we know that his testimony is true,” 21:24) suggests that he is speaking rhetorically here as much as personally. Having provided the “children of God” with an extended introduction in verses 12–13, he now joins his voice with theirs and speaks from their perspective.
15 The author now adds the testimony of “John” (compare v. 6) to his own testimony and that of the “children of God.” Testimony was the purpose for which John came (vv. 7–8), and now we are allowed to hear what he said. Origen, who defined this as the first of six such testimonies of John to Jesus (the other five being 1:23, 26–27, 29–31, 32–34, and 36), included all of verses 15–18 as words of John.* Few modern commentators have followed him. Most conclude that John’s testimony consists only of verse 15. According to the Greek text of Nestle and most English translations, the testimony is, “This was he of whom I said, ‘The One coming after me has come ahead of me, because he was before me’ ” (v. 15). Because the testimony is introduced in the present tense (“John testifies about him and has cried out, saying”),* it appears that the author is speaking of John as if he were still alive, a living witness to the author’s own generation.* The double time perspective is confusing: first, John said (past tense) that someone coming after him had gotten ahead of him because he existed before John; now John looks back on that pronouncement and testifies (present tense) to the readers of the Gospel that this person was none other than God’s “One and Only” (v. 14). Later we will learn that John had already made the same identification within his ministry, when he saw Jesus coming toward him and announced (to no one in particular), “This is he about whom I said, ‘After me is coming a man who has come ahead of me, because he was before me’ ” (v. 30). Two things are curious: first, John’s pronouncement seems to come abruptly and prematurely, before the narrative proper has even begun; second, John looks back (not once but twice) on something he had said earlier without ever being represented as saying it in the first place.*
The matter is complicated by a textual variant.* Origen followed a different textual tradition, reading “This was he who said” instead of “This was he of whom I said.”* Our single most important Greek manuscript, Codex Vaticanus (B), the fifth-century Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C), and Cyril of Alexandria all agree with the text of Origen,* and on this evidence Origen’s reading was adopted by Westcott and Hort, with the more familiar reading relegated to the margin.* Few English versions, even among the closest followers of the Westcott and Hort text (such as ERV, ASV, NASB, RSV, and NRSV) followed it at this point.* B. F. Westcott (without endorsing the reading) commented that it made “intelligible sense by emphasising the reference to the Baptist’s testimony: ‘this John, and no other, was he who spake the memorable words.’ ”* The Westcott and Hort text made such a reading almost inevitable by setting off “This was he who said” with dashes.* But it is not the only way to construe the variant reading. The words of the variant, “This was he who said,” or “He it was who said,” are, as Westcott recognized, not words attributed to John the Baptist but words of the Gospel writer introducing John. As such they can hardly be separated from the testimony to which they are attached. If the connection is maintained, then the whole sentence should be set off with dashes, yielding the translation I have adopted in this commentary: “John testifies about him and has cried out, saying—he it was who said, ‘The One coming after me has come ahead of me, because he was before me’—that ‘Of his fullness,’ etc.”* Instead of John the Baptist looking back on something he had said earlier, this is the Gospel writer himself, interrupting his own discourse to identify John by means of a well-known quotation. The quotation is aptly chosen because it makes three points important to the Gospel writer, especially in the Gospel’s first major section (chapters 1–3): that Jesus came “after” John (
Which reading is to be preferred? External evidence favors the Nestle text, but only slightly.* Transcriptional probability, on the other hand, argues for the Westcott and Hort reading.* The best recourse for a commentary is to leave open both possibilities and make the reader aware of their implications. If we follow Nestle and most English versions, John’s testimony is “This was he of whom I said, ‘The One coming after me has come ahead of me, because he was before me.’ ” The Gospel writer presents John the Baptist as a present witness quoting something he had said at some point in his ministry and assuring the Gospel’s readers that Jesus was the One about whom he had been speaking. If we follow Origen and the Westcott and Hort text (“This was he who said, ‘The One coming after me has come ahead of me, because he was before me’ ”), then this is not John’s actual present testimony to the readers of the Gospel, but simply the author’s way of reintroducing John by reminding the readers of something they already knew John had said. On this reading, the whole sentence, “He it was who said, ‘The One coming after me has come ahead of me, because he was before me,’ ” is a digression, although an important one in the setting of chapters 1–3. John’s present testimony to the readers of the Gospel comes rather in the next verse, introduced appropriately with the conjunction “that” (
16 By contrast, those who follow the Nestle text in verse 15 must translate the conjunction (
Some have seen in John a representative of the old covenant,* but there is little direct evidence of this in the text. Rather, like the Gospel writer and like a number of characters within the Gospel who confess their faith in Jesus Christ, John represents the believing community of the author’s day. He is not an Old Testament prophet but a New Testament Christian—perhaps the first Christian, in that he is the first to put his faith in Jesus (see 1:20, 29–34; 3:29–30). “Of his fullness”* recalls “full of grace and truth” (v. 14). The implication is that the Christian community has not only looked at One “full of grace and truth,” but has “received” from him those very gifts. “We have all received” corresponds, as we have seen, to “as many as received him” back in verse 12. To receive the Giver is to receive and partake of his gifts. “Of” (
17 Whatever may be true of the conjunction
In the case of the law, the passive “was given” points to God as the Giver,* even though it was given “through Moses.”* “Grace and truth,” by contrast, “came into being” (
18 The christological interest continues. The confessional “we” and “us” of the believing community testifying to its experience (vv. 14–16) now gives way to a tone of pure christological declaration not unlike that of the Gospel’s opening verses, and to a significant limitation on human experience: “No one has seen God, ever”* (compare 6:46; 1 Jn 4:12). The principle is classically Jewish, going back to the experience of Moses when God told him, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (Exod 33:20). Instead, it was granted to him to have the Lord pass by; then, the Lord told him, “I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (33:23; compare 34:6). In our text the accent is on “God,” which comes first in its clause even though it is the direct object, not the subject (compare, v. 1).* This is difficult to show in English without restructuring (for example, “God has never been visible to anyone”). Another clause follows, with a similar accent on “God,” now further identified as “One and Only” (thus,
The two clauses, “No one has seen God, ever,” and “It was God the One and Only … who told about him,” stand quite independent of one another grammatically, requiring us to infer the precise relationship between them. For example, “No one has seen God”; therefore “God the One and Only … told about him,” or “No one has seen God,” but at least “God the One and Only … told about him,” or “No one has seen God”; instead “God the One and Only … told about him.”* In any event, because “No one has seen God, ever,” hearing takes the place of seeing. Faith here, as in Paul, “comes by hearing” (compare Rom 10:17), and this is all the more appropriate in a setting where Jesus Christ has been introduced as “the Word.” He is now said to have acted as the Word when he “told about” God. “Told about” (
19 Verses 19–28 are linked to the preceding material by “And” (v. 19), once more resisting the notion that verses 1–18 should be set apart from the rest of the Gospel as “Prologue.” The clause “And this is [rather than “this was”] the testimony of John” gives to the testimony a certain contemporary quality, like the testimony of verses 15 and 16. At the same time, however, it calls attention to a particular occasion in the past, probably well into John’s ministry rather than near its beginning. John had by this time attracted enough attention for the religious establishment in Jerusalem to want to find out who he was and what he was claiming for himself.* “You” in the delegation’s question is emphatic, as if challenging John: “You—who are you?” or “Who do you think you are?”
“The Jews” as an identifiable group are here introduced for the first time in the Gospel. The context makes clear that they are the religious leaders of Israel, for they have the authority to send out envoys to investigate John’s claims and conduct. Because the delegation consists of “priests and Levites” (two terms occurring nowhere else in this Gospel), we are given the impression that “the Jews” too are a priestly group, presumably the “chief priests” mentioned in ten other places in the Gospel.* This would be appropriate because the delegation is concerned about John’s baptism, a matter of ritual purity (see 3:25). But more likely, “the Jews” (
C. John and Jesus (1:19–34)
And this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites to him from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” And he confessed, and did not deny; he confessed that “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What, then? Are you Elias?” And he said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you? We have to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am a voice of one crying in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ just as Isaiah the prophet said.” And they were sent from the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said to him, “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elias, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, saying, “I baptize in water; among you stands One whom you do not know, the One who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” These things came about in Bethany, across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
The next day he sees Jesus coming to him and says, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me.’ And I did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing in water was so that he might be revealed to Israel.” And so John testified, saying that “I have watched the Spirit coming down as a dove out of the sky, and it remained on him. And I did not know him, but the One who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘Whoever it is on whom you see the Spirit coming down and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes in Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”*
The account of John’s testimony picks up where it left off in verses 6–8 and 15. The whole section from verses 19 to 34 encompasses two testimonies, one negative and one positive, framed by the noun “testimony” in verse 19 and the verb “testify” in verses 32 and 34. The negative testimony in verses 19–28 has a specific setting in an encounter between John and a delegation sent from Jerusalem to question him (v. 19).* In verses 29–34 there is no longer any sign of this delegation, and John’s positive testimony seems directed to no one audience in particular. Yet his pronouncements about Jesus speak directly to the delegation’s concerns. For example, the question, “Why then do you baptize?” (v. 25), is not answered until John says, “the reason I came baptizing in water was so that he might be revealed to Israel” (v. 31). The mysterious phrase, “the One who comes after me” (v. 27), is more fully explained in verse 30, “After me comes a man who has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me” (compare v. 15). The claim that “I baptize in water” (v. 26) is left hanging until John completes the contrast with the information that the One coming after him is the One “who baptizes in Holy Spirit” (v. 33).* In short, the issues raised by the delegation on one day are resolved on the next, not for the delegation’s benefit but for the readers of the Gospel. This is John’s two-pronged testimony. Part one is negative and is terminated by a notice of place (“in Bethany,” v. 28), while part two is positive and is introduced with a notice of time (“the next day,” v. 29). We will look at them separately.
20 John, probably with good reason, interprets the delegation’s question “Who are you?” as “Are you the Christ?” (see Lk 3:15), and answers accordingly. The first clue that the question may have been asked with hostile intent is the language of his reply: “And he confessed, and did not deny; he confessed that ‘I am not the Christ’ ” (v. 20).* The repetition of “and he confessed” is striking, and just as striking is its negative reinforcement with the words, “and did not deny”—this in spite of the fact that what he issues is patently a denial!* “Confessed” does not refer to confession of sins but to maintaining one’s allegiance to Jesus Christ in the face of hostile interrogation, and this is what John is doing here implicitly. On a later occasion, “the Jews” are said to have “already decided” that anyone who “confessed” Jesus as the Christ would be put out of the synagogue (9:22; compare 12:42). Here the readers of the Gospel know, because John “came for a testimony, to testify about the light” (v. 7; compare vv. 15–16), that when he says, “I am not the Christ,” he means that “the Christ” is Jesus!* John’s apparent denial is actually a confession of his faith in “the Christ,” so that “the Jews” and their delegation are thwarted. He tells them nothing, while at the same time bearing implicit testimony to Jesus. The readers also seem to know that John was eventually imprisoned for his testimony,* and his language here allows them to conclude that he was imprisoned as a confessing Christian. His disclaimer, “I am not the Christ,” echoes and reinforces the notion that “he was not the light” (v. 8). While both passages may reflect an awareness of some who honored John as “the light” or as “the Christ,” the purpose of the disclaimer is not to put John down but to set the stage for his explicit testimony to Jesus in the section to follow.
The full name “Jesus Christ” has been used in verse 17, but this is the first mention of the title “the Christ” (
21 The delegation has not asked, “Are you the Christ?” in so many words, but in light of John’s reply they proceed as if they had: “What, then? Are you Elias?”* The expectation that Elijah would return to prepare the people for the day of the Lord is as old as the prophecy of Malachi, where the pronouncement, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me” (Mal 3:1, NIV), anticipates the concluding promise, “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the
As for “the Prophet,” the title seems to have been derived from the promise of Moses that “The
22 The delegation presses its question again, this time dropping the emphatic “you,” with its note of challenge. With this, they invite John to state his identity in his own terms. Their use of the phrase “those who sent us” reminds us once again that they are a delegation from “the Jews” in Jerusalem,* the real antagonists of both John and Jesus. Far from challenging John, they are almost pleading with him for an answer so that they will not be in trouble with “the Jews” for coming back empty-handed (compare the plight of those sent to arrest Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles in 7:32–36, 45–49). Their plea sets the stage for John’s self-description in the next verse.
23 All four Gospels describe John the Baptist with a quotation from Isaiah 40:3 (compare Mk 1:3, Mt 3:3, and Lk 3:4), but only here is the quotation attributed to John himself. The Gospel writer even calls attention to John as the speaker by prefacing his pronouncement with the delegation’s question, “What do you say about yourself?” (v. 22). “I,” he replies, “am a voice of one crying in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ just as Isaiah the prophet said.” While the last clause, “just as Isaiah the prophet said,” could be a parenthetical comment by the Gospel writer, it is more likely part of John’s reply.* The same text was cited by the Qumran community as a justification for their withdrawal to the Judean desert (1QS 8.14), but our Gospel divides the text differently and puts no particular emphasis on the phrase “in the desert.”* While the quotation preserves the older tradition that John carried on his ministry in the desert, its purpose is not to locate his activity geographically. In this Gospel, in fact, John is seen preaching and baptizing not in the desert but in villages (such as “Aenon, near Salim,” 3:23) with ample water supplies.
The purpose of the quotation is rather to present John as a solitary and anonymous “voice” (
24 The Gospel writer now supplies the information parenthetically (and belatedly) that the delegation was “sent from the Pharisees.”* “Sent” ironically echoes the earlier notice that John himself was “sent” from God (v. 6). Two “missions” confront one another here, John’s mission from God and the delegation’s mission from “the Jews” (v. 19). “Pharisees” helps define “the Jews.” The parenthetical comment seems to contradict what has gone before because the Pharisees were emphatically not a priestly group, and would not have been likely to send out a delegation of “priests and Levites.” But the Gospel writer, probably with a Gentile readership in mind, is not interested in fine distinctions between scribal and priestly authority. Later he will describe “the chief priests and Pharisees” as acting together repeatedly to have Jesus arrested (7:32, 45; 11:47, 57; 18:3), and the same alliance is presupposed here.*
25 The delegation goes on to ask, “Why then do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elias, nor the Prophet?” This is the first mention of John’s activity as a baptizer, and it comes rather abruptly. Evidently the readers are expected to know already that this “John” is actually “John the Baptist” (see Mt 3:1; Mk 6:25; Lk 7:20, 33) or “John the Baptizer” (Mk 1:4; 6:14, 24). Three verses later the Gospel writer finally makes explicit that “John was baptizing” (v. 28), but even there the interest is not in what he was doing but in where he was doing it. John’s baptizing activity, we now learn, is the reason the delegation came to him in the first place. Once-for-all ritual baptism was used in Judaism only for proselytes, and anyone presuming to baptize those who were already Jews by birth was in effect putting them in the position of proselytes. Such a procedure would have signaled that a new age was at hand and that all Israel needed cleansing.
The delegation’s assumption seems to have been that certain messianic figures would “baptize” at the beginning of the messianic age, probably in the sense of purifying the world, or Israel in particular, from sin. To them, consequently, anyone who baptized in water was making some kind of messianic claim. Their belief, while not explicitly documented in Judaism, has its roots in biblical prophecy, where God is the One who will purify Israel and no distinction is made between cleansing with water and cleansing by the Spirit. The best example is Ezekiel 36:25–27: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (NIV).* For those who expected such figures as “the Christ,” or “Elijah,” or “the Prophet,” it was natural to suppose that they would be the instruments through whom God would carry out this great work of purification.
26 John replies with an implied distinction between water baptism and the eschatological cleansing his questioners have in mind: “I baptize in water; among you stands One whom you do not know.” The implication is that this other figure will carry out a far more significant baptism than John’s. He is the One with whom they should be concerned. Those familiar with the synoptic tradition will expect him at this point to say that such a One will baptize “in Holy Spirit” (Mk 1:8), or “in Holy Spirit and fire” (Mt 3:11; Lk 3:16). He finally does (v. 33), but not until the next day, and not (so far as we know) in the presence of the delegation from Jerusalem. Instead, he taunts the delegation with two disturbingly contradictory pieces of information: first, that this greater One already “stands among you”;* second, that he is someone “you do not know” (italics added). The emphatic “you” (
27 John next provides the delegation a tantalizing clue, with the phrase “the One who comes after me” (v. 27). The reader has seen this phrase before (v. 15) and knows to whom it refers, but the delegation from Jerusalem does not. “The Coming One” (
Next, John makes explicit what so far he has only hinted at, that the Coming One is indeed greater than he. His metaphor is that this is One “the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (compare Mk 1:7; Mt 3:11; Lk 3:16; Acts 13:25). In contrast to the synoptic Gospels but in agreement with Acts, the text here omits mentioning explicitly “One stronger than I.” It also agrees with Acts against the Synoptics in its use of “sandal” in the singular rather than the plural, and of “worthy” (
28 The Gospel writer now intervenes to tell us—belatedly again—where this all took place (“in Bethany, across the Jordan”), and why (because “John was baptizing”). Readers could have inferred the latter from the delegation’s last question (v. 25), but the parenthetical notice now makes it explicit. “These things came about” (
The point of the reference is not that John baptized “in the Jordan River” (as in Mk 1:5; Mt 3:6; compare Lk 4:1), but that he baptized at “Bethany, across the Jordan,” wherever that may have been, presumably because there was a good water supply there—as there was at “Aenon, near the Salim” (3:23). In contrast to the Synoptics, this passage says nothing of a “desert” (see above, n.
Some have proposed that the reference is not to a village otherwise unknown, east of Jericho or the Dead Sea, but to the entire district of Batanea, the biblical Bashan, well to the north, in the tetrarchy of Herod Philip.* The suggestion is intriguing because it would explain why all of John’s named disciples were Galileans (1:44; 21:2), and how they could reach Cana of Galilee from “Bethany” by “the third day” (2:1). Yet the spelling cannot be made to correspond. Moreover, place names in the Gospel of John referring to large areas such as Judea, Galilee, or Samaria always have the definite article, while the names of cities or towns, such as Jerusalem, Bethsaida, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, Aenon, Bethlehem, the other Bethany, and Ephraim, usually do not.* By this standard, “in Bethany” appears to refer to a town or village. If the tradition behind the text is that John baptized throughout the district of Batanea east of the Sea of Galilee, then the Gospel writer has either misunderstood the tradition or consciously transformed it. This does not, of course, rule out the possibility that Bethany may have been further north and closer to Galilee than later tradition has placed it, perhaps even within the borders of Batanea. All we know from the Gospel is that John baptized there, and that Jesus had a temporary home there (1:39). It appears to have had some importance for Jesus, for it is later called a “place” (
29 With this, the delegation from Jerusalem is gone. We have no idea how they reacted to John’s testimony, or what “answer” they brought back to those who sent them from Jerusalem (v. 22). Center stage is John’s, and his alone. All of what follows are his words, except for brief narrative introductions in verse 29 (“The next day he sees Jesus coming to him and says …”), and verse 32 (“And so John testified, saying that …”). He first presents Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (vv. 29–31), and then gives explicit testimony as to how he reached that conclusion (vv. 32–34). The section is unified by John’s repeated references to “baptizing in water” (vv. 31, 33; compare v. 26), by twin notices that “I did not know him” (vv. 31, 33), and by three closely related statements of who “This is” (vv. 30, 33, 34), a presentation formula recalling the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ baptism (Mt 3:17) and transfiguration (Mk 9:7 par.). There is no voice from heaven here, except for John’s private revelation from “the One who sent me to baptize in water” (v. 33). Instead, John’s is the authoritative voice, telling us decisively who Jesus is (“the Lamb of God,” and “the Son of God”), and what he does (“takes away the sin of the world,” and “baptizes in Holy Spirit”).
The notice that it is now “the next day” will be repeated twice (vv. 35, 43), punctuating the narrative from here to the end of the chapter, and the consciousness of a time sequence will continue into chapter 2 (“on the third day,” 2:1; “a few days,” 2:12). As the scene begins, Jesus is “coming to” John, an expression which in this Gospel normally suggests giving allegiance to someone (see 6:35, 37, 44–45, 65; 7:37). The phrase echoes “the One who comes after me” (v. 27), confirming the impression that Jesus is a disciple of John, or at least a potential disciple. It is even possible to infer that Jesus is “coming” to John for the first time, as if for baptism, but the story as it unfolds makes that unlikely (see vv. 32–34).
The narrative introduction is in the present tense. As soon as John “sees” Jesus approaching, he “says,” “Look [
Why then doesn’t John say, “Look, the Son of God”? What is it that the metaphor of “the Lamb” brings to the title? The answer is neither gentleness nor silence nor a willingness to be sacrificed, but purity. When we are told in 1 John 3:5 that Jesus “was revealed so that he might take away the sins,” the author adds, “in him there is no sin” (compare 1 Pet 2:22). Without using the term “Lamb,” the passage in 1 John makes the point that Jesus is a Messiah “without defect” (like the Passover lamb of Exod 12:5).* When he is revealed, the author promises, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he is; and everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure” (1 Jn 3:2–3). If “taking away” (
Can we go a step further and say that the sinless Lamb “takes away the sin of the world” by shedding his own blood? Such an idea seems far removed from the thought of John the Baptist as we meet him in the synoptic tradition, even though his baptism was said to be “for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4; Lk 3:3). It is much more at home in the larger setting of the fourth Gospel as a whole, where Jesus as the good Shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11, 15; compare 11:52) and gives his flesh “for the life of the world” (6:51), claiming that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves” (6:53; compare vv. 54–57). It is even more at home in 1 John, where “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7; 5:6, 8; compare 2:2, 4:10), and in the Revelation, where Jesus is introduced as the One who “loosed us from our sins in his blood (Rev 1:5). While the Gospel writer never speaks of “the blood of the Lamb” (contrast Rev 5:9; 7:14; 12:11), and stops well short of attributing to John the explicit notion of cleansing from sin through Jesus’ blood, he nevertheless allows John’s testimony to evoke for his readers just such imagery. Yet if we read the pronouncement with Jesus’ redemptive death in mind, we must still be careful to remember that he is not a victim here, but the victor. Just as the author of Hebrews presented Jesus as High Priest, but a high priest like no other in offering up his own blood rather than the blood of animals (Heb 9:25–26), so the Gospel writer presents him here as “the Lamb,” but a lamb like no other in that he himself initiates the sacrifice, and by his own will accomplishes purification (compare Heb 1:3). Both in Hebrews and in the Gospel of John, Jesus is priest and sacrifice at the same time. “For their sake,” he will say, referring to his disciples, “I consecrate myself, so that they too might be consecrated in truth” (17:19). “The Lamb of God,” paradoxically, functions as a kind of priestly title, for it attributes to Jesus the work of purification and cleansing from sin. As to the time frame, it is clearly future from the standpoint of both John and the Gospel writer, even though the verb “takes away,” like the verb “baptizes” (v. 33, referring to a future act of baptizing in Holy Spirit), is a present participle. The point of John’s testimony is not to fix the time of the world’s purification, but to identify it as the work of Jesus, and of him alone.
30 While in narrative time it is still “the next day” after John spoke with the delegation from Jerusalem, we now hear of something John said publicly before that encounter (how long before we do not know): “After me comes a man who has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me” (compare v. 15). Having briefly echoed that earlier pronouncement in the encounter itself (“the One who comes after me,” v. 27), John now in retrospect cites it in full. It is in fact cited only in retrospect in this Gospel (vv. 15, 27, 30), never in its original narrative setting, and we can only conjecture what that setting might have been.* Here, as in verse 15, John testifies to the fact that Jesus “was before me,” something none of his hearers in “Bethany, beyond the Jordan” would have understood, but something the readers of the Gospel understand because of verses 1–5. Having presented Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” he now further identifies him as “a man” whom he had announced earlier: “This is he of* whom I said, ‘After me comes a man,’ ” and so on. With these words he calls our attention to the fulfillment of his own prophecy, something he never does in the synoptic tradition.* Only in the fourth Gospel does John point Jesus out in person as the “Coming One” of his expectations. “After” (
31 In claiming that “I did not know him,” John further confirms that he is speaking of a time prior to his meeting with the delegation from Jerusalem.* At that time he had said. “Among you stands one whom you do not know” (v. 26, italics added), implying that he himself did know the One of whom he spoke. Now he looks back to a still earlier occasion when, he claims that even “I did not know him” (the “I” here, like the “you” in verse 26, is emphatic). The “hidden Messiah” (see above, n.
What is this revelation to “Israel,” and how does John’s baptism bring it about? “Israel,” mentioned here for the first time, stands in contrast to “the Jews” in Jerusalem who sent the priests and Levites to question John (v. 19). To them he revealed nothing, but to “Israel” he will reveal the Messiah. “Israel” remains at this point undefined. John’s pronouncement leads us to expect a public disclosure of some kind during his ministry, but none will be forthcoming. We, the readers, are John’s only audience, so we alone are in on the secret that the Coming One whom he now sees “coming to him” (v. 29) is in fact Jesus. A few verses later, two of his disciples will learn of it (vv. 35–37), and they will tell others, but that disclosure will fall short of the wholesale “revelation to Israel” that John seems to promise (see, however, 2:11; 21:1, 14). As to what baptism has to do with the revelation, this too is unclear for the moment. John has some further explaining to do.
32 John has been speaking continuously since the beginning of verse 29. Now the narrative voice intervenes, as if to give John a moment to get his breath. Instead of the present tenses of verse 29, where he simply “sees Jesus coming” and “says, ‘Look, the Lamb of God,’ ” we have an aorist main verb, and a more formal beginning: “And so John testified, saying that ‘I have watched the Spirit coming down as a dove out of the sky, and it remained on him.’ ” There is something definitive about the way this testimony is introduced, recalling John’s earlier testimony before the Jerusalem delegation: “And he confessed, and did not deny; he confessed, that ‘I am not the Christ’ ” (v. 20). At the same time, it echoes the programmatic heading of verse 19: “And this is the testimony of John.” The theme of testimony frames the whole of verses 19–34, but it comes to fullest expression here in John’s account of what he saw: “I have watched the Spirit come down as a dove out of the sky, and it remained on him.” John is the first eyewitness in a Gospel that values eyewitness testimony (compare 19:35; 20:8, 20, 24–29). He becomes here the spokesman for all who have “looked,” whether literally or spiritually, at the Word in human flesh, and seen “glory as of a father’s One and Only” (v. 14).* John’s vision leads him to the same conclusion, that Jesus is indeed “the Son of God” (v. 34).*
The scene John describes in his testimony is not explicitly said to be Jesus’ baptism, but because we are familiar with the baptism from the synoptic accounts, it is hard to imagine it any other way. John sees “the Spirit coming down as a dove out of the sky” on Jesus, just as Jesus himself saw it according to Mark (1:10) and Matthew (3:16). Because of the metaphor of the dove, “out of the sky” is probably the appropriate translation for the Greek phrase
33 John’s disclaimer, “and I did not know him, but …,” repeats word for word the beginning of verse 31, and is followed similarly by a reference to his work of “baptizing in water” (compare also v. 26). What is new is that we now learn whose purpose it was that the Coming One should be “revealed to Israel” (v. 31). It was not John’s own plan, but the plan of “the One who sent me.” This expression, which Jesus will use frequently in reference to his own mission,* reminds us that John, too, was “sent from God” (v. 6; also 3:28).* Like the delegates from Jerusalem who first questioned him (v. 22), John was an agent or emissary—but from an immeasurably higher authority!
Only twice in the entire Gospel are we given the precise words of God, here and in 12:28, where “a voice from heaven” responds to Jesus’ prayer, “Father, glorify your name,” with the assurance, “I have both glorified and I will glorify again.” Here “the One who sent” both John and Jesus tells John, “Whoever it is on whom you see the Spirit coming down and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes in Holy Spirit.” The divine vocabulary matches John’s own vocabulary (v. 32) almost word for word. In real time, God’s promise comes first and John’s testimony echoes what God had told him, but in narrative time it is the other way around: John’s words come first (v. 32), and the words of God echo and confirm his testimony (v. 33). We are not told the circumstances under which God spoke to John. The retelling of it makes it sound less like a public voice from heaven than like the private assurances to Paul, whether from God or the risen Jesus, that “I have many people in this city” (in a dream at Corinth, Acts 18:10), or that “My grace is enough for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (in answer to Paul’s prayer, 2 Cor 12:9). Yet the context, recalling the traditional story of Jesus’ baptism, leads us to expect a public disclosure of some kind. The concluding words, “This is he who baptizes in Holy Spirit,” while spoken to John privately, are consistent with such a disclosure, for they echo John’s presentation formula, “This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who has gotten ahead of me, because he was before me’ ” (v. 30).
34 The formal introduction to John’s eyewitness testimony, “And I have seen, and have testified” (v. 34; compare 19:35), now sets the stage for John’s definitive statement of who Jesus is, and a narrative of the call of his first disciples (vv. 35–51). The voice of God, “This is he who baptizes in Holy Spirit” (v. 33), echoing John’s words, “This is he of whom I said” (v. 30) is reechoed in turn by John himself: “This is the Son of God.” The effect of the repeated presentation formula (vv. 30, 33, 34) is to give John’s testimony the same authority and status that the voice from heaven has in the synoptic tradition (at least in its Matthean form, “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I take pleasure,” Mt 3:17; compare 17:5; Mk 9:7; Lk 9:35). John’s voice dominates the narrative. Nowhere is the title, “Gospel of John,” more apt than here. John uses the emphatic “I” nine times in verses 19 to 34 (and once more in 3:28), but no one else (including Jesus) ever uses it within the Gospel’s first three chapters.* John’s testimony here, like the voice at the baptism in the synoptic tradition, is “public” as far as the readers of the Gospel are concerned, even though there is no identifiable audience within the narrative. John, and not a heavenly voice, confirms Jesus’ identity to the reader, even though it remains for him to be “revealed to Israel” (compare v. 31). For the first time, the “One and Only” (vv. 14, 18) is explicitly defined as “the Son of God” (
If “Son of God” within the developing Johannine tradition clarifies and interprets “the Chosen of God,” in the Gospel’s present literary framework it clarifies and interprets (as we have seen) the otherwise difficult “Lamb of God” (v. 29). If this is the case, then the participial expression, “he who baptizes in Holy Spirit” (v. 33), also has a likely equivalent in “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (v. 29). Both are priestly acts in that they refer to a work of purification from sin which Jesus will accomplish, accenting first its worldwide goal and second the Spirit as the instrument by which he will carry it out. This work of purification—whether as “Lamb of God” or as “the Baptizer”—will begin with Jesus’ own baptizing ministry (3:22, 26; 4:1), but will come to full realization only in his sacrificial death and consequent bestowal of the Holy Spirit on his disciples (20:22–23).
35 The adverb “again” calls attention to the repetition of the phrase “the next day” (v. 35), and consequently to the Gospel writer’s consciousness of a series of days (see vv. 29, 43; 2:1). Again John “was there,”* but the difference between this day and the preceding one is that now he has an audience: two of his disciples. Although John has used the ambiguous terminology of someone coming “after me” (see vv. 15, 27, 30), this is the first we are told explicitly that he even had disciples. Presumably his disciples were drawn from among those he baptized (compare 4:1, where “baptizing” and “making disciples” are coordinate terms), but it is doubtful that all who were baptized became his disciples.
D. Jesus and John’s Disciples (1:35–51)
The next day John was there again, and two of his disciples. And looking right at Jesus as he walked by, he says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” And his two disciples heard him speaking, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and noticed them following, and he asks them, “What are you seeking?” Then they asked him, “Rabbi”—which means teacher—“where do you stay?” He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they came, and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about the tenth hour. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who had heard what John said and followed him. First thing, he finds Simon, his own brother, and says to him, “We have found the Messiah”—which means Christ. He brought him to Jesus. Looking right at him, Jesus said, “You are Simon, the son of John; you shall be called Cephas”—which means Peter.
The next day he decided to set out for Galilee, and he finds Philip, and Jesus says to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, from the town of Andrew and Peter. Philip finds Nathanael and says to him, “We have found someone of whom Moses wrote in the law, and of whom the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip says to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and says of him, “Look, a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit!” Nathanael says to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called to you under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered him, “You, Rabbi, are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you that I saw you underneath the fig tree, you believe. You will see something greater than these things.” And he says to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you all, You will see the sky opened, and the angels of God going up and coming down over the Son of man.”
As the sequence of days continues, Jesus gathers around him four, possibly five, disciples, all Galileans: first, Andrew and an unnamed companion, both disciples of John; then Andrew’s brother Simon Peter; then Philip, who may or may not be Andrew’s unnamed companion; finally Nathanael, known already to Jesus as a “true Israelite” (v. 47). This is the “call” of the disciples according to this Gospel, not by their fishing nets at the lake of Galilee as in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but at “Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing” (v. 28) and where Jesus had a temporary residence. Moreover, in contrast to the other Gospels, their reason for following him is given. They follow him because John has proclaimed him in their hearing as “the Lamb of God” (v. 36), and they acknowedge him as “the Messiah” (v. 41), as “someone of whom Moses wrote” (v. 45), and as “the Son of God” and “the King of Israel” (v. 49). Jesus decides to go to Galilee, enlists them all to accompany him, and promises them a vision—as yet unexplained—of “the sky opened, and the angels of God going up and coming down over the Son of man” (v. 51).
36 In a dramatic reenactment of verse 29, John looks at Jesus, not “coming to him” as before, but “as he walked by.”* The verb of motion prepares us for the movement of the disciples, who “followed” him (vv. 37–38)—not metaphorically but literally—as he kept on walking. In the presence of the two disciples, John repeats his presentation of Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (compare v. 29), but without the accompanying reference to “taking away the sin of the world.” This means that the readers understand more than the disciples do about Jesus, but the omission does not impugn in any way the disciples’ faith.* Rather, it focuses attention on the single issue of Jesus’ identity rather than on his priestly work of purification and redemption. For the moment, the Gospel writer is interested in simply piling up titles for Jesus, allowing each to interpret and help define the others: “the Lamb of God” (v. 36), “the Messiah” (v. 41; compare v. 45), “the Son of God” (v. 49; compare v. 34), “the King of Israel” (v. 49), and “the Son of man” (v. 51). Jesus is all of these and more, and the Gospel writer wants us to hear it from a chorus of voices, finally including Jesus’ own (v. 51). The simple “Lamb of God” is sufficient for that purpose.
37–38 On hearing John’s words, his disciples immediately fall in line behind the “peripatetic” Jesus.* They “followed” him, and leading the way he had to turn around in order to see them “following.” “What are you seeking?” he asks them. These are the first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel, and he will repeat them to different audiences at two other crucial points in the narrative.* They answer with a question of their own, “Where do you stay?” (v. 38). They are not avoiding Jesus’ question, but in effect telling him precisely what they are looking for. They speak not out of idle curiosity, but precisely as “followers.” They want to know where Jesus is “staying” because they assume he is on his way there. He is their leader now, and they want to know where he is leading them.*
John’s disciples call Jesus “Rabbi,” and the Gospel writer intervenes to tell us that this word means “Teacher” (
39 Jesus invites the two, “Come, and you will see,”* and we are told that “they came, and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day.” Two things are noteworthy: first, we are again reminded that these events took place within a single day, or what was left of it; second, the verb “to stay,” or “remain” (Gr.
At this point, another narrative aside tells us that “It was about the tenth hour.” The “tenth hour” would be 4 p.m., if we assume that this Gospel, like the others, is following the Jewish time reckoning in which the daylight hours begin at 6 a.m., not at midnight as in Roman law.* This is not a long sojourn with Jesus.* The reference to the “tenth” hour, which has no obvious symbolic significance,* and which qualifies or even subverts the notice that “they stayed with him that day,”* probably reflects historical tradition, not the creativity of the Gospel writer. Yet while “tenth” is not symbolic, “hour” may very well be, for Jesus will soon begin to speak of another decisive “hour” (2:4).*
40 At this point the Gospel writer begins to take an interest in these disciples as individuals. First he mentions “Andrew” (v. 40), who is promptly identified in relation to “Simon Peter,” a name apparently well known to the readers of the Gospel (compare 6:8). Andrew is Simon’s brother (Mk 1:16//Mt 4:18; Mt 10:2//Lk 6:14) and is introduced here in order to bring Simon Peter into the story as quickly as possible, even though Simon is not (as in Mark and Matthew) one of the first two to follow Jesus. Consequently, the second of the two disciples goes unmentioned. Because this disciple is unnamed, some have identified him with the anonymous “disciple whom Jesus loved,” who will be introduced in the latter half of the Gospel, beginning at 13:23. There is little ground for this conjecture. At most it could be argued that if the “beloved disciple” is (as 21:24 claims) the source or author of the Gospel, he might have deliberately left himself out of the account.* But a number of characters in the Gospel are left anonymous, and for a variety of reasons. Here the story is about Andrew and Simon Peter, not about Andrew’s unidentified companion.
41 Having identified Andrew as “the brother of Simon Peter,” the author now tells us that Andrew “finds Simon, his own brother” and tells him, “We have found the Messiah.” The reader is then told that Messiah “means Christ,” just as Rabbi (v. 38) meant “teacher.” There is repeated play here on the verb “to find,” probably linked to Jesus’ opening question, “What are you looking for?” (v. 38). The text evokes Jesus’ words in the synoptic tradition, “Seek, and you will find” (see Mt 7:7//Lk 11:9),* words which seem to be known and echoed, at least negatively, in this Gospel as well. In contrast to those to whom Jesus will later say, “You will seek me, and you will not find me” (7:34, 36; also 8:21; 13:33), John’s disciples “find” here all that they are “seeking”: Jesus himself and where he was staying, and other disciples with whom to share the story.
Another notable feature here is that Andrew finds his brother Simon “first thing” (
Andrew’s testimony to Simon, “We have found the Messiah,” echoes the proclamation of John, “Look, the Lamb of God!” (v. 36). John’s disciples hear “the Lamb of God” as “the Messiah.” To the Gospel writer and his intended readers, this is not a misunderstanding. “The Lamb of God” and “the Messiah” are synonymous terms to this writer, and yet it must be added that such designations as “Lamb of God” (vv. 29, 36) and “Son of God” (v. 34) further characterize “the Messiah” as one who is pure and who carries out a work of purification, whether described as “taking away the sin of the world” (v. 39) or as “baptizing in Holy Spirit” (v. 33). Andrew’s simple pronouncement, “We have found the Messiah,” shows no awareness of this dimension of the Messiah’s work, yet later, when Simon Peter’s turn comes to speak for himself, he confesses Jesus as “the Holy One of God” (6:69). It is unfair to conclude, therefore, that Andrew’s testimony here to Simon, and Philip’s testimony to Nathanael (v. 45), are somehow inadequate or unworthy of true disciples, or, as Moloney puts it, “a blatant untruth.”* Obviously the author and the readers of the Gospel hold to a “higher” christology than these first few disciples, but as Moloney himself aptly remarks, “the disciples have not read the prologue.”*
42 When Andrew brought Simon to Jesus, Jesus “looked right at him” (see also v. 36) and called him by name:* “You are Simon, the son of John;* you shall be called Cephas.” The latter is not a name, but the Greek transliteration of an Aramaic word for “rock.”* Here it functions as a kind of nickname, which the Gospel writer promptly renders into Greek as “Peter,” explaining why Andrew was introduced just above as “the brother of Simon Peter” (v. 40).* “Simon, the son of John” is usually read as the equivalent of “Simon Barjona” (or “Simon, son of Jona”) in the Matthean account of the changing of Simon’s name (Mt 16:17), but “John” and “Jona” are quite different names in Hebrew.* The only “John” mentioned so far is the one who has just proclaimed Jesus as “Lamb of God” (v. 36), and it is at least as likely that Jesus is addressing Simon as an adherent or disciple of John as that he is making reference to Simon’s actual father.* While Simon is not explicitly said to be John’s disciple, he is with his brother Andrew and other disciples of John “in Bethany, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing” (v. 28), not at home in Bethsaida (v. 44). If this is the case, then when Jesus tells “Simon, the son of John,” that his new name will be Cephas, it marks a transition for both disciples (or all three) from being John’s disciples to becoming disciples of Jesus. The initiative in this transfer of allegiance lies not with them, but with Jesus. Jesus’ pronouncement to Simon marks a point in the Gospel at which Jesus takes center stage, and John for the time being disappears. From here on, Jesus will call and direct his own band of disciples, and John will be seen only once more, just long enough to say an eloquent good-bye (3:22–36).
43 If our interpretation of “first” (v. 41) is correct, then “the next day” here means the next day after two of John’s disciples followed Jesus, not the next day after Jesus’ encounter with Simon. Grammatically, the subject of the verb “he decided” is not immediately specified, but contextually it can only be Jesus.* Not only was Jesus speaking at the end of the preceding verse, but in the larger context Jesus was the leader and John’s disciples the followers. Having taking the initiative by promising Simon a new name (v. 42), Jesus now continues to direct the action. His decision “to set out for Galilee” anticipates the wedding “in Cana of Galilee” (2:1), and may even presuppose Jesus’ invitation to the wedding (2:2). Having “decided” to make the journey, Jesus himself now does some “finding.” He “finds” Philip* and “says to him” (now for the first time explicitly to anyone): “Follow me.” Only when he utters these classic words of invitation (see 21:19, 22 and compare 8:12; 12:26) is it made explicit that Jesus is actually the subject of all three verbs, the one doing the deciding, the finding, and the speaking.
In contrast to verses 38–39, Jesus’ invitation to discipleship is now very direct. He does not ask, “What are you looking for?” (as in v. 38), because Philip is not looking for anything. Jesus does the looking—and the finding. Nor does Philip ask, “Where do you stay?” (v. 38), because Jesus is not “staying” anywhere. Instead, we have here an account of a “call” more like those in the synoptic Gospels, where Jesus meets certain individuals, says “Follow me” (as in Mk 2:14, for example), or “Come along after me” (as in Mk 1:17), and they either follow or do not. Here too Jesus is on a journey, and invites Philip to join him. The initiative is his, and his alone.
44 Despite these differences between the call of Philip and that of the first three disciples, the pattern of narration does follow that of verses 40–42, where Andrew found Simon Peter. In a narrative aside, the author pauses to tell us that “Philip was from Bethsaida, from the town of Andrew and Peter,” just as he paused to tell us earlier that “Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who had heard what John said and followed him” (v. 40). In each instance, the identification of one disciple is preliminary to the “finding” of another, who then becomes the center of attention—Simon Peter in the first instance, Nathanael in the second. The two narrative asides serve to establish a relationship between the two brothers and Philip, who comes from the same town. The relationship between Andrew and Philip surfaces again later in the Gospel, where Andrew never appears without Philip (see 6:5–9; 12:21–23), and Philip only once without Andrew (14:8–10).
In the present context, it also lends credibility to Schnackenburg’s suggestion that Philip is the unnamed disciple of verse 40.* This proposal, while not provable, explains why Jesus so quickly “finds” Philip (v. 43), and why Philip then proceeds to do just what Andrew had done (v. 45).* The notice that Philip was “from Bethsaida” hardly means that the scene of the action has shifted there from “Bethany, beyond the Jordan” (v. 28).* Bethsaida was in Galilee (12:21), and at this point Jesus has only “decided to set out for Galilee” (v. 43). He has not arrived there. Quite possibly the Gospel writer expects his readers to know that Bethsaida is in Galilee, for knowing that would help them understand why Philip responded so quickly to Jesus’ invitation.* For him, and for Peter and Andrew as well, it was an opportunity to return home, parting company with John and his disciples. While nothing is said explicitly of Andrew and Simon Peter accompanying Jesus and Philip (and presumably Nathanael) to Galilee, the presumption later on is that “his disciples” were present at the wedding in Cana (2:2, 11), and then with Jesus in Capernaum (2:12). The implication of the narrative is that by this time they numbered either four or five, depending on whether Philip and the unnamed disciple are the same.
45 The vocabulary of verse 41 repeats itself. Philip “finds” Nathanael and “says” to him, “We have found” someone. In the first instance it was “the Messiah” (v. 41); here it is “someone of whom Moses wrote in the law, and of whom the prophets wrote.” Taken literally, Philip’s plural “we” suggests a deliberate repetition of Andrew’s language, and consequently an awareness of the encounter between Jesus and the two disciples of John and of Andrew’s testimony to Simon Peter. This would also lend plausibility to the conjecture that Philip was the unnamed disciple of verse 40. Moloney claims that Philip here “repeats the lie of Andrew: ‘We have found.…’ The only person Philip found is Nathanael (v. 45a), but he was found and called by Jesus.”* This presupposes an overly sharp distinction between finding and being found, a distinction appropriate to discussions of divine sovereignty and human free will, but not to the dynamics of storytelling. In Jesus’ parables, for example, finding (Mt 13:44–46) and being found (Mt 18:12–14; Lk 15:32) are almost interchangeable metaphors for salvation, and the same is true here.
Nathanael is unknown to the synoptic tradition,* and all efforts to identify him with someone named in the synoptic Gospels (Bartholomew, for example, or Matthew) are speculative.* Philip’s witness to Nathanael advances the narrative in three ways. First, it reminds us of the Gospel writer’s interest in “Moses,” still accenting (as in v. 17) promise and fulfillment, continuity rather than discontinuity, between Moses and Jesus. Later, Jesus himself will endorse Philip’s claim (“If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me,” 5:46). Second, it anchors the notion of “the Messiah” in the entire Hebrew Bible, both the law and the prophets.* This suggests that the whole Bible testifies to a single “Coming One,” as John thought (vv. 15, 26–27), in contrast to the delegation from Jerusalem, with their pedantic alternatives of “the Christ,” “Elias,” and “the Prophet” (v. 25).* Third, Philip finally names the One who is both the long-expected Messiah and the main character in the present story: “Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”
Ironically, the only characters in the Gospel who speak Jesus’ name are individuals or groups who do not believe in him: “the Jews” in Galilee who asked, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” (6:42); the man born blind, who testified that “the man called Jesus” had healed him (9:11); some Greeks at the Passover who would tell this same Philip, “Sir, we want to see Jesus” (12:21); the soldiers sent to arrest “Jesus the Nazarene” (18:5, 7); and, finally, Pilate’s mute inscription over the cross, “Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews” (19:19). Philip, like the man born blind, will soon come to believe in Jesus (2:11; compare 9:38), but at the moment he is only a “follower” in the sense of hearer and companion on a journey, not yet a “believer.” None of this means that these would-be followers are wrong in their understanding of Jesus. Even though Philip’s testimony “falls short of the full truth,”* readers of the Gospel would have viewed it as a valid pointer toward that truth. Even without birth narratives, they would have known that “son of Joseph” and “Son of God” are not contradictory terms. “The Word came in human flesh,” after all (v. 14), and “son of Joseph” is as legitimate an expression as any for “human flesh.” As to the virgin birth, the term “son of Joseph” neither implies nor excludes it, as the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke both recognize. Whether it is a matter of the Gospel writer’s conscious irony,* or of simply recording faithfully the terms by which Jesus’ contemporaries described him, there is no basis here for calling into question the genuineness of Philip’s commitment to Jesus.
46 The last phrase, “from Nazareth,” catches Nathanael’s attention: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”* Contrast the first two disciples’ encounter with Jesus. They had asked, “Where do you stay?” (v. 38), but this time it is a question not of where he is “staying” temporarily, but of where his home is. Nathanael’s question is rhetorical and skeptical, where theirs was serious and searching, yet Philip’s answer, “Come and see,” echoes Jesus’ earlier answer, “Come, and you will see” (v. 39).* Nathanael’s skepticism about Jesus probably does not arise out of small-town rivalries (Nathanael was from Cana, according to 21:2), but out of a stubborn provincialism in reverse that refuses to see anything great or glorious in that which is familiar or close to home. Nathanael takes offense at “Nazareth” for much the same reason that the human mind in every generation takes offense at the Word coming “in human flesh” (v. 14).* Whether or not it also reflects the writer’s awareness of later Jewish polemic against “the sect of the Nazoreans” (Acts 24:5) is more difficult to determine. If it does, then Philip’s words, “Come and see,” stand as an invitation to the Jewish community to put old prejudices aside and test the claims of Jesus and the Christian movement fairly on the basis of personal experience.
47 Verbs of motion are noticeable once again. Just as John had seen Jesus “coming to him” (v. 29) and then again “as he walked by” (v. 36), and had said “Look, the Lamb of God!” so Jesus now sees Nathanael “coming to him” and says, “Look, a true* Israelite, in whom is no deceit!” The purity of the true disciple mirrors the purity of the Lamb himself. The expression, “a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit,” recalls the story of Jacob, above all the change of name from “Jacob” to “Israel” (Gen 32:28), anticipated by Isaac’s statement to Esau that “Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing,” and Esau’s reply, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!” (Gen 27:35–36, NIV). Nathanael is a true “Israel,” forever free of the “deceit” (
As in verse 29, the expression “coming to him” hints at the notion of allegiance. Nathanael is already on his way to becoming a disciple and, despite his initial skepticism,* there is no hint that he is coming to Jesus as a “sinner.” Even though Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (v. 29), he is not said to be calling “sinners” here (contrast Mk 2:17 par.; Lk 5:8). “Sin” in this Gospel belongs to “the world,” and to the realm of darkness and death. In contrast to 1 John (1:5–2:2; 5:16–17), this Gospel has little reflection on the “sins of the righteous.” Jesus is calling “true Israelites,” in fulfillment of John’s intention that he “might be revealed to Israel” (v. 31). If not explicitly “righteous,” they are at any rate “chosen” by Jesus (compare 6:70; 13:18; 15:16, 19), “given” to him and “drawn” to him by the Father (compare 6:37, 39, 44, 65; 10:29; 17:2, 6, 9, 24). Nathanael as “a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit” is typical of them all,* and Jesus’ promise to Nathanael turns out finally to include the whole group (v. 51).
48 Nathanael hears Jesus’ words as directed to him personally, and asks, “How do you know me?”* There is no false modesty here. With a touch of humor, the Gospel writer highlights Nathanael’s candor as a way of confirming Jesus’ view of him as a man without deceit.* Jesus now goes on to explain his knowledge of Nathanael: “Before Philip called to you* under the fig tree, I saw you.” Grammatically, the words are ambiguous,* but the most likely meaning is that “under the fig tree” is where Nathanael was when Philip “found” him and told him about Jesus (v. 45).* This would imply as well that Jesus knew of his comment about Nazareth (see n.
Why a fig tree? Assuming that it was simply because that was where Philip found Nathanael, the question still remains, Why call attention to such a detail? One proposed answer is that “Under what tree?” was an accepted way of asking for evidence.* Another is that a specific biblical text is in view, Zechariah 3:10, against the messianic backdrop of 3:8.* But if Nathanael represents “Israel” in a symbolic reenactment of biblical history, then Jesus’ role is the role of God, and a different text, Hosea 9:10, comes to mind: “Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your ancestors” (NRSV). The point would then be a comparison between Jesus finding the new Israel among the disciples of John, and God finding the old Israel in the days of the patriarchs.* Jesus spoke elsewhere of the delight of discovering an unexpected treasure in a field, or of selling everything to acquire one magnificent pearl (Mt 13:44–46); the image in Hosea of finding fruit unexpectedly in a barren land was well suited to make a similar point. As we have seen, Jesus in this Gospel considers his disciples a precious find, a gift from the Father, but it is too early in the Gospel account to make such a thought explicit (see above, n.
49 Jesus’ supernatural knowledge of Nathanael’s character and circumstances (compare 2:24–25; 4:17–18)* calls forth a spontaneous confession of faith: “You, Rabbi, are the Son of God. You are the* King of Israel.” The first of these titles reinforces the testimony of John on the basis of the Spirit’s descent on Jesus that “this is the Son of God” (v. 34). It is the only title for Jesus used more than once in the chapter. The second title, “the King of Israel” (see 12:13), is precisely what we would expect from “a true Israelite.” Nathanael, as “Israel,” acknowledges “Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth” as his King and Lord.* The designation of Israel’s king as God’s son goes all the way back to the biblical Psalms (compare Pss 2:6–7; 89:26–27), and in the present context the two are virtually synonymous ways of affirming Jesus as “the Christ” or “Messiah” (compare vv. 41, 45).
The Gospel writer and his readers know that Jesus is God’s Son in a more profound sense than Nathanael could have understood (see 1:14, 18), yet he allows Nathanael (like John in v. 34) to speak for him and for the entire Christian community. Nathanael’s confession anticipates the writer’s hope that all who read “might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing have life in his name” (20:31). To Nathanael, within the story, “King of Israel” defines what “Son of God” means, but for the author and his readers “Son of God” (that is, “God the One and Only.… right beside the Father,” v. 18) defines what “King of Israel” means. There is ambivalence about Jesus’ kingship in this Gospel. He eludes efforts to make him king (6:15), yet the crowds in Jerusalem echo Nathanael’s words in welcoming him as “King of Israel,” in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9 (12:13, 15). The inscription over the cross, in common with the other Gospels, reads, “the King of the Jews” (19:19; compare v. 14), but the Gospel writer puts the irony in context with a serious dialogue between Jesus and Pilate over kingship (18:33–38) and a reminder to Pilate that Jesus “made himself the Son of God” (19:7). “My kingship is not from this world,” Jesus tells Pilate, “You say that I am a king; for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I might testify to the truth. Everyone who is from the truth hears my voice” (18:36, 37). Those who are “from the truth,” like Nathanael, are the “Israel” of which Jesus is King. Nathanael and his companions will learn shortly that Jesus’ identity as Son and Revealer of God defines and takes precedence over his identity as King.
50 Jesus takes Nathanael’s confession in stride and promises him even more. His response is wordy,* and could be read as a kind of rebuke, but it is doubtful that any rebuke is intended.* Jesus accepts Nathanael’s words as a genuine expression of belief. While there have been general references to those who “believe” in the Light (v. 7) or in Jesus’ name (v. 12), Nathanael is the first individual in the Gospel who is explicitly said to “believe.” Jesus’ reply should probably be punctuated as a statement (NIV: “You believe”),* but even if it is punctuated as a question (RSV, NRSV: “Do you believe?”), Jesus is not casting doubt on Nathanael’s faith, only on the merit of the evidence on which it is based.* Jesus’ supernatural knowledge of the past or the present, while impressive, is not the most important reason for believing in him.
Three chapters later many Samaritan villagers “believe” in Jesus on the basis of a woman’s testimony that “he told me everything I ever did” (4:39; compare vv. 17–19, 29), but after spending two days with Jesus they say to her, “No longer do we believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world” (4:42). Similarly here, Nathanael’s faith based on Jesus’ supernatural knowledge of his meeting with Philip* will give way not to a deeper faith but to more conclusive verification. In the case of the Samaritans the verification came in what they heard for themselves from the lips of Jesus, while for Nathanael the verification consists of things he “will see” (compare Philip’s invitation to “come and see,” v. 46). Nathanael’s experience moves from being seen (vv. 47, 48) to seeing (vv. 50, 51). If Jesus is to be “revealed to Israel” as John promised (v. 31), then “Israel,” like John, must “see” Jesus* (compare vv. 32–34) and the “greater things than these,” of which Jesus now speaks.*
51 Jesus now goes on to explain the “greater things,” addressing first Nathanael alone, and then immediately a wider audience: “Amen, amen, I say to you all.” Commentators often resolve the discrepancy by arguing either that verse 51 is “an addition of the Evangelist’s,”* or (on the contrary) an originally independent saying imported into the Johannine context.* But even if such theories were provable, they would have little relevance to the interpreter’s task, which is to make sense of the narrative as it stands. Three considerations must be kept in mind. First, Philip’s invitation to Nathanael back in verse 46 to “Come and see” makes it a fair inference that Philip is also assumed to be present. Second, the narrative flow of the chapter allows us—invites us, in fact—to go a step further and assume that all four individuals who have met Jesus—Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip, and Nathanael—are with him at this point. These four (or five, if the unnamed disciple is not Philip) seem to constitute the group designated as “his disciples” in the next chapter (2:1, 11, 12, 17, and 22). Third, the plural “you all” (
The double “Amen” formula occurs 25 times in John’s Gospel as a way of solemnly attesting the truth of what is about to be said. It is never doubled in the other Gospels, where Jesus uses the single “Amen” 31 times in Matthew, 13 times in Mark, and 6 times in Luke. The formula does not demand the plural “you.” Jesus could have used the singular (
The allusion in Jesus’ pronouncement to Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Gen 28:12) is neither as direct nor as unmistakable as is commonly assumed.* There is no stairway or ladder reaching to heaven, no Jacob asleep and dreaming, no vision of the Lord, no covenant promise.* John Chrysostom discussed the pronouncement at some length without any reference to the Genesis text: “For on Him as on the King’s own Son, the royal ministers ascended and descended, once at the season of the Crucifixion, again at the time of the Resurrection and the Ascension, and before this also, when they ‘came and ministered unto Him’ (Matt. 4:11), when they proclaimed the glad tidings of His birth, and cried, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace’ (Luke 2:14), when they came to Mary and Joseph.”* The links between Jesus’ promise to Nathanael and Jacob’s dream are two: first, the angels (using the same phrase, “the angels of God”), and second, the verbs “going up and coming down” in just that order (since angels have their home in heaven, we might have expected the opposite). While these similarities are sufficient to establish a connection, they do not justify reading the pronouncement as in any way a midrash or paraphrase of the Genesis text—as if to equate “the Son of man” either with the stairway or with the sleeping Jacob at the bottom.*
More to the point is the fact that angels are associated with the Son of man nine other times in the Gospels,* and are viewed on at least three different occasions as Jesus’ actual or potential protectors during his sojourn on earth (see Mt 2:13–14, 19–21; 4:6, 11; 26:53; Mk 1:13; Lk 22:43).* Chronologically, Jesus’ promise to Nathanael and the other disciples comes closest to the notice at the temptation in Mark and Matthew that “the angels were ministering to him” (Mk 1:13; compare Mt 4:6, 11). In simplest terms, “the angels of God going up and coming down over the Son of man” represent the “glory” (
As to the term “Son of man” itself, it makes its first appearance here as a title for Jesus comparable to “the Lamb of God” (vv. 29, 36), “the Son of God” (vv. 34, 50), “the Messiah,” or “Christ” (v. 41), and “the King of Israel” (v. 50). In its strategic context here, it trumps all the others—even “Son of God”—as the defining title for Jesus in this Gospel. This is appropriate because, unlike the others, “Son of man” is not a title someone else gives to Jesus, but one that he claims for himself, just as in the other Gospels.* What is unclear is whether or not Nathanael was familiar with the term, and whether or not Jesus expected him to be. Neither Nathanael’s response nor that of the other disciples is given. Unlike the rest of the “Son of man” sayings in the Gospel of John, this one ends the conversation. It invites comparison with Jesus’ response to the High Priest before the Sanhedrin: “From now on* you will see the Son of man seated on the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt 26:64; compare Mk 14:62). There Jesus was responding to an enemy questioning his supposed claim to be “the Christ, the Son of God” (or, in Mark, “the Son of the Blessed”); here he responds to a disciple confessing him as “Son of God” and “King of Israel.” But in each instance he resolves the issue with a reference to himself as “Son of man,”* and a promise that “you will see” something to vindicate the Son of man. In Matthew and Mark, “Son of man” comes near the beginning of the pronouncement; he is enthroned in heaven and coming again, and that is his vindication. Here “Son of man” comes last in the sentence; angels minister to him already on earth, and that is his vindication.* Standing where it does, at the very end of Jesus’ initial call of his disciples, “Son of man” cries out for definition. Nathanael does not ask, “Who is this Son of man?” (12:34), or “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe in him?” (9:36), yet the unspoken question lingers.
